How to Use Facebook ‘Graph Search’ to Boost Your Career

By Danny Rubin

Facebook’s ‘Graph Search’ is essentially a people-friendly search engine. Want to find someone in your neighborhood who likes to play soccer? Easy. What about photos of your friends before 2000? Yep, can do.

A Totally New Way to Get Hired

A company needs to hire a graphic designer or someone with graphic design skills. The HR person might use ‘Graph Search’ and type ‘friends of co-workers who are graphic designers.’ The search function uses natural language, so the question will sound like normal speech.

If you’re a graphic designer, you might come up in that query. Of course, that can only happen if you have ‘graphic design(er)‘ as a phrase in your profile. Otherwise, how would Facebook know?

Example 2

A company is looking for ‘friends of friends who speak and translate French.’ Facebook allows you to add any languages and an ‘About You’ section to your profile. If you include that you’re a French speaker and know how to translate the language, ‘Graph Search’ may once again deliver an HR coordinator right to your door.

Until now, we used Facebook (and increasingly Google+) as a place to share photos, articles, viral videos and life updates. LinkedIn was the site to look professional and ready for business. Now a recruiter can use BOTH tools to size you up.

With ‘Graph Search’, Facebook has thrust its one billion users back into the job market because people in your extended network can find your bio with a simple query. (tweet this)

If there are certain keywords or phrases that you want associated with your profile, it’s time to add them in.

That means you should include:

- a full job title

- job description

- where you attended school

- involvement with local/civic organizations

For now, ‘Graph Search’ will only use people, photos, places and interests to deliver results, but the company plans to include more features as development rolls on.